JUST BEAR WITH ME…

…maintains that each of us has powerful and interesting stories to tell.

WHAT IS Just Bear With Me…?

This is where I tell stories with data, often using tales from my own life to provide context. My story-telling style – call it “annotated meandering” – inspired this site’s name. Just bear with me…I do get to the point.

The cover photograph shows the Vale Rio Diner, which used to sit at the intersection of Routes 23 and 113 in Phoenixville, PA. It appears prominently here.

This is also where I promote and sell my books, starting with Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History…and My Own.

Here is what some folks I respect say about it:

David Mayhew: “Greatly have I enjoyed your new book, which kept me glued! It all flows well. Film noir is a real fetching theme! What an expert and connoisseur you are!”

Larry Harnisch: “It’s a good one!”

Morgan Richter: “I am enjoying it immensely.”

I also promote other brilliant storytellers, because we creators need to support each other.

Matt Baume makes entertaining, intelligent and thought-provoking videos about queer representation in mass media. Here is his excellent recent book. Similarly, Jarred Corona pours out his heart in every queer-themed video he produces, doing so with insight and integrity.

If you grew up in the 1980s, you will love Richter‘s When Gen X Ruled the Multiplex series. It is like chatting with an old friend about movies.

Robin Bailes of Dark Corner Reviews mixes in-depth analyses of classic horror films with short streaming reviews and hysterical looks at truly awful horror films. Yes, he went here.

Polyphonic and Trash Theory make the best videos about the history of pop music I have ever seen.

The struggles of Matt Murray of Corn Pone Flicks with the absurd and arcane copyright rules of YouTube are legendary. His David Lynch analysis videos rank among the best.

Nick Hodges carefully separates fact from fiction in historical movies on his HistoryBuffs channel, while the folks at Kurzgezagt tell beautiful animated stories about, well, everything. The 1920s Channel shares my passion for this transformative decade.

FuzzCulture makes insightful videos about the modern world’s active suppresion of creativity.

While the husband and wife team in The House of Tabula (formerly The Cinema Cartography) can be a bit pretentious, few are as passionate and knowledgeable about film as an art form. Shoutouts also to Be Kind Rewind, Cinema Cities, Cinematic Century Chronicle, Thomas Flight, Adriana Oister, PolterGibbst and Patrick H Willems.

Do I agree with everything these creators say? Of course not. But they do the hard work to back up their insights and opinions, they are wholly original (no AI slop here), and I applaud and respect that.

THE BLOG

Since my YouTube channel is my only social media outlet, when I have something brief to say, I will put it here. Older entries may be found here.

March 15, 2026: I finally completed Chapter 6 – The Snatching of Corinna Modell – of The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey. Contemporaneous coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer allowed me to clear away the debris of myth and half-truths surrounding the May 5, 1924 abduction (and safe return within 48 hours). Modell’s older first cousin Herman arranged my private adoption by Lou and Elaine Berger in 1966.

Nationwide coverage arguably peaked on May 16, 1924 with this strip on page 19 of the Oakland (CA) Post-Enquirer. While not strictly accurate, it captures the broad outline of events reasonably well. In a sense, this is the 1920s version of a true crime podcast or YouTube video.

March 4, 2026: Some extraordinary things happened in the Texas primaries yesterday.

Since 2018, no Democrat had topped the 644,432 votes Beto O’Rourke earned in that year’s US Senate primary. Yesterday, five Democrats – State Representative Gina Hinojosa (Governor), State Representative James Talarico (US Senate), US House Member Jasmine Crockett (US Senate), State Representative Vikki Goodwin (Lieutenant Governor) and State Senator Nathan Johnson (Attorney General) – topped 1 million votes.

For the first time since 2002, meanwhile, more voters chose the Democratic statewide primary than the Republican one. With more than 98% of ballots counted, the differentials in the gubernatorial and Senatorial primaries are Democrats +48,592 and Democrats +149,626.

And Talarico won more votes in majority-Hispanic counties in the US Senate primary than Vice President Kamala Harris did in the November 2024 presidential election, suggesting a sharp swing back toward Democrats by Hispanic voters.

Whoever emerges as the Republican Senate nominee in May – US Senator John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton – would still begin as a slight favorite to beat Talarico in November, but signs of massive Democratic enthusiasm and turnout continue to emerge.

February 4, 2026: High school productions are hit or miss.

But the Brookline (MA) High School production of The Prom, the Broadway musical loosely based on the Mississippi high school prom cancelled because a lesbian student wanted to bring a female date, is an absolute knockout. And I am not just saying that because our queer, gender-fluid younger child is part of the stage crew. Trust me, I have been less inspired by previous productions on which she worked. The show was well-acted, crisply choreographed and surprisingly free of technical glitches. The music was a nice mix of soaring and sentimental, even if the dialogue is a bit ham-handed at times.

The Prom delivers its message of tolerance, acceptance and inclusion – of simply letting people be who they are – without devolving into mindless good-bad dichotomies. Yes, there is the deeply religious conservative PTA head who spearheads the cancellation of the prom, but her story is somewhat balanced by hinted-at personal tragedy and the severe economic decline of the town itself – now the fictional Edgewater, IN. From her perspective, the Broadway performers who seize on the story of the cancelled prom are interlopers who are there only to prop up their negative press images. And she is not entirely wrong – folks can do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

Kudos to Brookline High School for putting on this production, and for the opening afternoon audience that cheered, applauded and embraced the performance, including some last-minute anti-ICE messaging to protest actions in Minnesota and elsewhere. And I am – we are – so proud of our younger child for being part of it.

BOOK WRITING UPDATES

[As of March 2026] After months of distractions and procrastination, I have nearly completed The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). The biggest hurdles were having my legal older sister genetically-tested through Ancestry.com and hesitancy to tackle the detailed coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer in May 1924 of the snatching of Corinna Modell. In the meantime, careful exploration of passenger manifests and Russian tax records led me to rewrite the story of my maternal great-grandfather Jacob Gurmankin – who came from Odessa, not Kherson, as I mistakenly wrote here. Many questions answered, though some remain.

Analyzing Mindy’s DNA confirmed hypothesized relationships among my Berger ancestors, while revealing new relatives and one extraordinary fact: my great-great-grandfather Shmuel Mayer Berger did not die in the Pale of Settlement in the mid-1890s as I had speculated. He immigrated to Philadelphia in 1922, at the age of 80, after the death of his wife Esther Kunich and the October 1919 murder of his eldest son Louis in Bucks County, PA. Samuel Berger died in 1931 at the age of 89. The Associated Press reported he was 103 years old, but records from Pruzhany, in what is now Belarus, disprove this.

I am essentially one chapter away from a completed draft. Likely titled “One Final Trip to West Philadelphia,” it will present the brief, but highly consequential, meeting of my genetic parents in the fall of 1965. And then I will once again seek a literary agent – or go directly to publishers, depending how much the rules of engagement have changed in five years.

Thoughts, aid and advice are welcomed!

[As of April 2025] Rather than revise Interrogating Memory (“IM”), I intend to write two new books – essentially forming an IM trilogy. The first, which draws from the first four chapters of IM, is The West Philadelphia Story: An Immigrant Jewish Journey (“TWPS”). TWPS focuses entirely on my Jewish ancestors, from their late-19th century migrations from the Pale of Settlement through my private adoption in 1966. It is another love letter to Philadelphia and my Jewish heritage, reminding us of the vital role immigrants played – and continue to play – in the economic and social well-being of the United States. The title riffs on the play and film The Philadelphia Story, which my mother, born Elaine Kohn in 1938, thought reflected life on the other side of nearby City Avenue.

I thought that once I rearranged Chapter 2 (Tragedy at the Oakford Bend Garage, as of March 2026), I would have completed a full first draft of TWPS. However, I keep uncovering new information, pushing such a draft further into the future.

The second book, still in the planning stages, will have a title something like Diners and Other Idiosyncracies (“DOI”). The key theme of DOI will be the need to live own’s one life in one’s own way, while still behaving like a responsible adult. Starting with the history of my genetic families, it builds upon the last five chapters of IM. Rather than being strictly chronological, however, each chapter will explores a specific theme: identity, popular culture, mental health, solitary night driving, diners and other family restaurants, critical thinking, etc.

With a little luck and a lot of persistence, I will find a literary agent for these and all subsequent books.

WHO AM I?

Click here to learn about Matt (aka Dr. Noir).

WHAT ELSE WILL YOU FIND HERE?

The Noir of Who: Classic Film Noir’s Imprint on the Resurrected Doctor Who

Disease Testing Worksheet

WHAT DO I ASK FROM READERS?

Please continue to bear with me, while inviting others to do the same. I am grateful to everyone who clicks “Like” and comments in a respectful way. It truly is possible to disagree without being disagreeable.

And if you enjoy what you read here, please consider making a donation. Simply select a “quantity” of $1 payments equal to the amount you wish to donate. For example, to make a $5 donation to Just Bear With Me, you would select “5” under “Quantity.” I adopted this Rube Goldberg method because Stripe stopped processing payments to Just Bear With Me on October 23, 2024 for…reasons.

Thank you again to everyone who visits this website! I value every single view.

---

HOW CAN YOU CONTACT ME?

I want to hear from you!

Please click here to offer your thoughts, ask me questions – or just say Hello!